The man in back glanced at him as they passed. The eye Shayne had knuckled was red and swollen. The man was smiling happily, but the smile froze as he recognized Shayne.

Shayne blinked his directional signal and fell back into line, the second car behind the Dodge. His lips were drawn back in a savage grin. This was his town. His Buick had just come out of the garage with new valves and points, and everything tinkered up into racing condition. Unless the Dodge had a specially souped-up motor, he knew he had them.

They tried to hang him up on a red light at Biscayne Boulevard, but he bulled through, his horn going. When they took the curving ramp up to the North-South Express way, the Dodge leaned more than it should; probably there was something wrong with the front suspension. It came off the ramp too fast and barely recovered.

The big man shattered the rear window with a gun butt. Shayne dropped back, letting another car slip in ahead of him. He was watching for the buggy-whip aerial and markings of a police car. There were usually two or three patrolling this stretch. When he saw one across the divider, traveling north, he swung into the left-hand lane, honking his horn and snapping his headlights. They saw him, but they would have to go on a few miles, to the 79th Street connection, before they could turn. The Dodge was cutting in and out, doing eighty. Shayne stayed one or two cars back. The big man waited, on his knees behind the broken window, hoping for a shot.

When the lanes began to separate for the great 39th Street cloverleaf, one stream heading for the Julia Tuttle Causeway to Miami Beach, the other to the Airport Expressway, Shayne was not surprised to see the Dodge lean to the right, toward the airport. Shayne let it pull ahead, knowing he could come up with it again on the straightaway. He lost it for a moment. When he saw it again it had drifted to the left. The lean became more and more pronounced as the cloverleaf sharpened. The brake lights came on, too late, and the brakes grabbed unevenly. One wheel hit the low curb.